After Munch #4 © 2012 Jane Waterman
Invisible illness advocacy

Working (or Not Working) With an Invisible Illness

Day 14 – My own prompt for today: ‘Talk about the issues involved in working (or not working) with an invisible illness. Is it possible to find a life-work balance with a chronic invisible illness?’ Note: These problems aren’t unique to people with invisible illnesses. However, this is my area

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Venus with Sjogren's Syndrome
Invisible illnesses

Venus with Sjogren’s Syndrome

Anatomy classes used to make me feel physically sick (I suppose there is such a thing as too much information for a sensitive soul!). I undertook the challenge using Botticelli’s Venus as a model, to render a more beautiful image of my life with Sjogren’s. This is based in my

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Stained Glass © 2010 Jane Waterman
Creativity

Care Package for People with Sjogren’s and Depression

Day 9 – Community Care Package. Create the perfect care package for your members or fellow patients. Note: A Sjoggie is a person with Sjogren’s syndrome. A care package is all about comforting. Happily, there are a lot of things on this list that will comfort both people with depression

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This is What Is © 2012 Jane Waterman
Mental health challenges

Depression is Not the Enemy

Day 8 – Write a letter to your health When I think of health, I automatically think of illness: a rather unfortunate side effect of having lost my health at the age of 24. To me, addressing a letter to my depression means personifying it. I’ve read a lot of

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Behind Glass © 2003 Jane Waterman
Living with invisible illness

Disclosure – The Beauties and Perils of Telling All

Writing prompt – Disclosure post. How did you decide what to share? What do/don’t you share? I’ve been sick for a while now, at least 22 years that I was conscious of, but the depression bit started a couple of years before that. I’ve come out of a few closets in

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Early Light #2 © 2012 Jane Waterman
Invisible illness advocacy

Why I Write About My Health

Introduction During November, I’m writing a series of posts for National Health Blog Post Month. The event is organized by WEGO Health, a great organization that brings together health activists from around the world. What’s a health activist you might ask? A health activist is, not surprising, typically a person

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This is What Is © 2012 Jane Waterman
Treatments

Chronic Pain and Catastrophic Medicine

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for a long time. Having been through a somewhat hectic week, and feeling rather strung out by recent pain levels, I thought I’d try to jot down some of my thoughts in a more experiential post, and at a later time,

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The Experience of Pain © 2012 Jane Waterman
Living with invisible illness

The Experience of Pain

During a discussion of pain and pain management with a good online friend (you can see his remarkable photography here), my friend Michael made the remark that the efforts of those who cope with chronic pain are heroic. It’s certainly not a typical way to view ourselves. My frequent experience

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Storm On Jupiter © 2012 Jane Waterman
Mental health challenges

Theories of Depression

I’m far away from my first career as a physicist, but not so far that I didn’t learn a few things. In particular, when preoccupied with the search for a theory of everything and being foiled yet again, physicists discover there’s always another level of complexity that they hadn’t considered.

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Snow Labyrinth © 2012 Jane Waterman
Healing toolkit

Snow Labyrinth (for Clare)

I made a snow labyrinth in our garden today, in too-thin boots, with my bare arms to the world, while starlings, juncos and red-winged blackbirds chittered in the trees, waiting for me to relinquish their frozen world again. It wasn’t my initial design. I was just taking scraps to the

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